Prompt–Sunday, February 12

I finished reading “Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence” by Nick Bantock. It is a novel in letters. One of the lines that caught my attention was in one of Griffin’s letter: “Art for art’s sake is best quarantined here in the old world. I crave an art that passionately transcends the mundane instead of being a device for self-deception.”

Write a letter to Griffin.

Dear Griffin,

I appreciate the strange nature that led me to your letters. Yes I feel guilty for reading your mail, but there it is. They landed in my lap and I was intrigued by the art and the stamps. Next time I will have to make you a postcard instead of typing. I wonder if you have an email address.

In one letter you wrote to Sabine, you said, “Art for art’s sake is best quarantined here in the old world. I crave an art that passionately transcends the mundane instead of being a device for self-deception.”

Art can be a way to deceive the artist, but art is also a way for the artist to present themselves to the world. Personally I ask art questions of myself. Rarely it answers. Mostly it raises more questions.

At first I didn’t care for literary fiction. How could reality be interesting when I grew up reading fantasy and science fiction? It wasn’t until several literary fiction novels caught my interest that I began to pay more attention to reality in my own writing. Some of the titles are “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer and “Room” by Emma Donoghue.